


Loose Ends (Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier)

by aurora_ff



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. References, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Comics/Movie Crossover, Community: dollhousefics, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Memory Loss, Multi, Past Rape/Non-con, Peter Gabriel Songs Are Everything, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Pre-Captain America: Civil War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-21 12:14:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 17,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1550105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurora_ff/pseuds/aurora_ff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of the destruction of S.H.I.E.L.D., Clint Barton (Hawkeye) convinces Natasha (Black Widow) to return to the States and to Steve Rogers (Captain America), who is faced with his own challenges.  An ugly truth about the Winter Soldier's past comes to light. </p><p>  <b>Tragic Romanogers.</b> Also a character study for Natasha/Clint/Steve/Bucky on themes of love and memory.  Prior Joss Whedon works are referenced in subtle ways.</p><p> </p><p>  <b>Updated November 2014 to hint at possible Captain America: Civil War plot-lines. My speculation.</b></p><p> </p><p>Excerpt:<br/><i>If Steve had any sense at all, he would have set fire to that dossier and called Sharon Carter, or Maria Hill, or...someone nice. Anyone not as twisted as she was, anyone not just as broken as the ghost of a man he was set on hunting.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was September in Istanbul, and autumn was Natasha’s favorite season. In the afternoons, she often took a run around the Hagia Sophia, the ancient building that was once a church, then a mosque, and then a museum. Changing. In a few weeks, the leaves would show their own shifting colors.

Clint was the new head of security to one of Stark’s subsidiaries in Turkey, a company that dealt with the disposal and destruction of biological weapons. The job provided a useful amount of income for he and Natasha to build other “rainy day” covers.

For months, Natasha had found herself at loose ends. “Please, Nick, don’t do this to me…” she had whispered as she witnessed Fury die on the operating table. The grief she felt was not only for him, but for herself.

Without a director, without a handler, she was like a boat without a rudder. Clint would always keep her upright and sea-worthy, but it was not for him to steer her.

In considering her options, she thought about returning to (not dead, after-all) Fury and hunting down other HYDRA agents; but with her conflicted record now available to the intelligence community, she would likely find herself unwelcome or a distraction. Her effort to trade a few of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s undocumented and undigitized secrets for that file from Kiev would probably come back to haunt her.

Natasha also briefly considered returning to the states to help Steve Rogers on his quest to find the Winter Soldier; but that was a girlish notion born out of the longing to--

“Forget it,” she ordered herself, pushing herself harder into the run, letting the ache of her lungs and legs distract her.

* * *

If Steve had any sense at all, he would have set fire to that dossier and called Sharon Carter, or Maria Hill, or...someone nice. Ghost hunting was a futile endeavor; she out of anyone could attest to that. Steve should move on. She should move on. Leave the past buried; leave the shades alone.

Natasha had done everything in power to exorcise that one tender encounter with Steve before S.H.I.E.L.D.'s downfall, after the past collided with the present on an overpass in D.C.. She had become so unbearably _hollow_ , and all she could think of was to offer him what she desperately wanted for herself. Weeks later, she had burned the rags of the white nightgown she wore for Steve in a barrel in Prague. When the thing was ash, she went out clubbing and had a one-night stand with a stranger. And then another the next night, and another, until she almost lost count. It just made the hole in her heart larger.

She even did something she hadn’t attempted in years; she tried to seduce Clint. The tears welling in her eyes, her soft pleading that Clint was the only one that truly knew her and yet still could love her, did nothing to turn him. He sat her down at the kitchen table with two glasses of juice.

“Natasha,” he said evenly, clasping her wrists. “If you want me to hold you while you cry and talk it out, that’s alright. If you want to fuck half of Eastern Europe, I won’t stop you. But I won’t be a stand-in for the demons of your past...or...Well.”

Clint sighed and looked directly at her. “You should go back to America. See this through.” The double entendre was not lost on either of them, she was certain.

Natasha scoffed. “And pretend to be something I’m not? Pretend Steve's...” She couldn't finish that thought. At least not to anyone but herself.

Clint lifted his brow and, not unkindly, asked her. “When did that become a concern?”

Natasha grimaced and pushed herself away from the table, suddenly agitated, shamed, angry. Everything.

“Think about it, kiddo. Tell him. The truth or what's best for him to hear. Whatever. Just do something about what's eating you up. That’s all I’m asking.”


	2. Chapter 2

Loitering in Istanbul's Hippodome park, Natasha leaned herself against the iron lattice railing and studied the ancient sculpture known as the “Serpents Column”, a twisting bronze pillar since turned black by over two thousand years of age. It once had three heads, but the whims of history and humanity had broken and scattered them. Now, just gaping stalks where they should rest.

She felt Clint’s presence come to her side.

She began to ask him about lunch. “So what are you in the mood -- .” But she paused mid-sentence, glanced to Clint, and noticed an almost imperceptible tenseness to him. He wore sunglasses, which made it difficult for her to judge the look in his eyes.

“Clint…?” she asked warily, a pit forming in her stomach.

“Hill called me,” he explained. “On the company phone. She wants you to know that Margaret Carter passed away about four hours ago.”

Margaret? Somehow she didn’t understand, until she did, and a breath escaped her lips. “Peggy…”

Natasha felt herself clutch harder at the high railing, higher than her head, and she suddenly felt like she was imprisoned.

“Stark has a private jet at the airport. All fueled. Flight-plan to D.C. set. It’s waiting for you, along with a bag I packed,” Clint told her.

She blinked, her heart pounding. “Clint, I’m not really…”

She heard the rare annoyance in his voice. “Nat, what you _are_ is becoming unbearable.” He continued. “Now, you have two choices. Either I bring you to the airport in style, or I call in a few folks I supervise...and we get you there in a trunk.”

She frowned and turned to him. She felt a bit dizzy. To try to fight through it, she summoned up some wry humor. “They’re that good?”

A corner of Clint’s lips twitched. “Don’t make a scene, Nat. We’ve just started making this town home…”

Natasha took a deep, deep breath. “Alright. Let’s go.”


	3. Chapter 3

Steve sat on the hard wood of the pew, his head bowed as he stared down to his clasped hands.

The minister raised his voice again. “Almighty God, you judge us with infinite mercy and justice, and love everything you have made. In your mercy, turn the darkness of death into the dawn of new life, and the sorrow of parting into the joy of heaven…”

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. It was all turned around; he was all turned around. When he looked down that aisle, it was supposed to be his girl standing before the altar, flowers in her hands, beautiful and awaiting. And Bucky, his best man, giving him a huge encouraging grin as the butterflies flit in his stomach. 

But today, her walnut-stained coffin was the only thing at the end of that walk. The children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren that could have been theirs sat in the first few pews, while he sat almost anonymously with the other mourners. He thought Sharon, the Agent-nurse, was among them. His stomach felt like it held a stone.

Peggy’s voice, aged, but still warm and chiding. _“Oh, Steve. Always so dramatic.”_

With the others gathered, he mouthed, “Amen.”

Sam, next to him, said quietly. “She’s here.”

Steve forced himself to look again at her casket. “No, Sam,” he droned. “No, she’s not.”

Sam sighed. “Can I give her my set of keys? It would be better that way. Like friends.”

He didn’t know exactly what Sam was getting at, so he just complied. “Sure, Sam. Whatever is best.”

“Okay, brother. I’ll see you out on the steps.” 

Sam slipped out of the church before the next hymn started. 

Steve then stared at the stained glass above the altar, and he studied the sinners on their knees before the suffering of Christ. The face of Mary Magdalene with her red hair transfixed him, and for just a breath, his grief and hurt was lessened.


	4. Chapter 4

Sam approached the woman that was smoking a cigarette by herself well outside the church doors, near a large oak, its leaves barely kissed with red. She was wearing a wig, which seemed superfluous with her black hat and large black sunglasses. 

“Can I bum one?” Sam asked, leaning against the tree, and the woman offered her pack and a lighter. “Nasty habit, isn’t it?” he muttered casually as he lit up.

She scoffed. “I hate these things.”

Sam took a few puffs, then tapped the ashes away. “You know, you can go in. It’s a large crowd. She was loved.” Damn. Why was he always saying the wrong things to Natasha?

Her voice almost broke. “I don’t think I have the right.”

What had happened to the cool, collected agent?

Sam closed his eyes and loosened his tie. “But you do have something.” He stepped to the nearby sidewalk and snubbed out the smoke.

He fished for the keys from his suit coat. “Here. Cap said you could use these.” He offered them to her. She didn’t move. He shook them again.

She finally held out her hand. 

“He doesn’t spend much time in his apartment anymore. Almost everything is in boxes. But he crashes at his studio. Gold key. Address is on the ring.”

“His...’studio’...?” Something had definitely shaken her. The composed assassin was no where to be found. Hopefully, she and Steve could help each other. They trusted one-another, and Sam had even witnessed some chemistry between them, when they weren't busy taking down a corrupted international intelligence agency.

“Yeah. An artist’s studio, you know? Loft? Open floor plan? He paints. Or has been. Pepper’s arranged a gallery showing in a couple of weeks. He’ll probably sell every piece.”

“That’s...great,” was all she managed.

“Well. Vets’ pensions are shit, and he’s got to fund a manhunt. Stark offered, but it’s personal to him.”

She said nothing. The cigarette was untended in her fingers.

With the PTSD meetings, he had gotten much better at reading people. Helping in a way that did not disable.

“Natasha,” Sam said, summoning earnesty. “You came back because you need each other. You’ve been through so much. Guy needs a wingman. Sometimes that’s me, sometimes it’s someone else.”

She sighed, and her lips twitched a smile. “Got it, Sam.”

“Just ask him to text me and check in? He knows how to do it. He’s a pro.”

She nodded, finishing her own cigarette and extinguishing it with a heel. “I’ll do that.”

Sam snapped his fingers and waved one as he walked away. “Bring food. He’ll be hungry eventually. There's this rib-joint. Freddy's. It's unbelievable and you can get it to go.”


	5. Chapter 5

As the sun set, Steve parked his motorcycle in the alley. He texted Sam: “At loft. Thanks for everything today.” The long ride had done him some good. After the funeral, he just hopped on his bike and rode somewhere, anywhere, into the Maryland countryside. The blur of the road and the wind washed him in its own way, soothing the ache in his chest.

At the top of the stairs, his phone buzzed with a return text. “np, man. i’ll get keys back l8r.”

Steve frowned, puzzled at the last part. Too busy staring at his phone, he almost missed the note taped to the door. _Stopped by. 1400. - N_ . Steve felt something hitch within him. He looked at the zeros closely. It was a code that Natasha and Hawkeye had shared with him back when they did S.H.I.E.L.D. missions. If the zeros had slashes through them, it was a warning. The zeros were empty.

Still, Steve proceeded with quiet caution. The loft was silent and dark.

He felt something rise in his throat. She was another ghost, then, but a benevolent one that hid little notes in his apartment with the music and media suggestions, just to make him laugh or make him think. She didn't know how much he missed her.

He raked his hand through his hair and stepped towards the spare kitchenette for a glass of water.

That is when he saw her, not a phantom after all, curled up and slumbering on the futon, her clothes still on from wherever in the world she had come from. The dusky light from the large windows gave a red-gold halo to her hair. From all their shared missions, the manhunt of months ago, he knew she was a light sleeper. And even then, as she dozed, her features never truly lost their schooling.

But as Steve gazed at her, he could find no walls or defenses. She had no idea how beautiful she was like that, how years fell off of her. Maybe, with him, she felt safe.

He felt himself reach for a sketchpad and a piece of umber chalk, quietly sliding a stool under him. She didn’t stir as he began to trace her.

Months ago, he probably wouldn’t have done this. Yesterday, either. But today...today he needed to have something of her before it evaporated or got locked away. Buried.

Steve’s hands and eyes worked quickly. The light would not last much longer.

He kept Peggy’s picture in his compass and looked at it every day while he and the Howling Commandos worked to decimate HYDRA. Shortly, he didn’t need to look at it all to recall the fall of her hair, the arch of her eyebrows…

The portrait in front of him blurred. He must have made some sort of noise, maybe a gasp.

Natasha’s eyes flew open and in a matter of moments she understood. The sketchbook was eased out of his hands and closed. The chalk set aside. He pressed his face to her shoulder as hot tears soaked into her shirt. He thought his arms may crush her.

“I loved her,” he choked. “I loved her so much. And I never got to...”

“I know, Steve,” Natasha whispered. “Peggy knew. She was a smart woman. She forced herself to move on because she knew that you would never, ever want her life to end just because yours did. She honored your memory that much...now you can honor hers.”

Steve smiled despite himself, feeling her words like truth.

Natasha just held him, sometimes stroking his hair. The night crept in. Streetlights sent dim squares of light upon the walls and ceiling. Alone with her in the dark like this, it reminded him of when he used to sleep over at Bucky’s and they could talk about things that they never explored in the daylight.

“Clint sometimes does this for you, doesn’t he?” Steve asked. Silence. She was unlikely to answer, or use one of her deflections.

“Sometimes, yes,” she finally replied.

Steve bit his lip, and decided to go for it, since it seemed she was feeling candid.

“And you’re not lovers. Everyone assumes, but it’s something different.”

He felt her shake her head. “No, Steve. We’re not,” she murmured, her voice laden with something he could not recognize.

His heart was beginning to pound as another question, _the question_ , was on the tip of his tongue.

Nastasha slid her arms away from him and clasped his shoulders, looking at him from arm’s length. “Steve,” she said seriously. “You’re hurting. You just buried the love of your life today. Your head and your heart aren’t on straight. Let me be here as your friend, alright?”

Her words were like a splash of cold water. Of course. He suddenly felt foolish and embarrassed, and rather than let her see that, he got up from the stool and walked away from her. “I’ll turn on some lights.”

The mood shifted as he went to a bank of dimmer switches and slowly brought up the track lighting. The studio filled again with warmth and the color of his paintings, some complete and some still on their easels. 

Natasha headed to the kitchen. “Are you hungry?” she asked.

Steve rubbed the back of his neck, trying to recall the last time he ate. A protein bar, the day before last. And that he had forced himself to swallow, like a good soldier.

“Yeah. I think I am,” he agreed.

“I brought take-out from this barbeque place.” She rifled around with some bags in the small fridge. “Supposedly the best ribs in D.C. I got enough to feed a small army. Your toaster-oven looks pretty large. I think I can fit in a good helping.”

“It sounds great, Nat.”

He realized that he was still in his suit from the funeral. “I’m going to take a shower and change.”

Her voice was warm, steady. “I’ll be right here when you get out.”

Natasha came when he needed her, balming his emptinesses. There were people at SHIELD who believed she could almost read minds. Steve decided that she was better at reading hearts.


	6. Chapter 6

Natasha woke up much later than Steve. It was possible he didn’t sleep and simply got up after she fell into slumber. They shared the futon. The negotiation for that was a dance of which they both knew the steps. He always gallantly offered to take the floor, she always reminded him of the other beds and tight spaces they had shared in the past where nothing had happened. And that night, nothing did happen.

She tied on her red, kimono-cut robe and padded barefoot through the loft, looking for Steve in the maze of easels. A few of the walls were even painted with murals of an evolving cityscape. The place smelled of freshly-brewed coffee. She spotted his shield leaning against a column, sporting fresh enamel coloring, and smiled.

He had done more work on a painting, something abstract with incredible sense of motion. The impression of moonlight, pines swaying in a freak wintry wind and snowflakes rushing by. It unsettled her that without S.H.I.E.L.D., she hadn’t known what to do with herself, the woman with a thousand identities. But Steve, the supposed “man out of time”, the “fish-out-of-water”, could transform and transition so effortlessly away from the ugliness of the world defense and intelligence business into a soulful artist. He could be this, be this for the rest of his life and be content.

But this morning Steve wasn't working on his art. She found him sitting on the wood floor in a semi-circle of documents and photographs, a mug of coffee and a plate of toast spread with peanut-butter nearby.

The dossier of the Winter Soldier, James Buchanan Barnes. She felt suddenly chilled, and her instincts told her to run, run all the way back to Istanbul. Then she saw the saddened expression on Steve’s face and she wanted to do anything, everything in her power help him understand that pulling harder on that thread would very likely reveal things that someone of his _goodness_ should not be burdened with. Not about her; not about the man he called 'Bucky'. There were more ways that one to destroy a man; the Black Widow was acquainted intimately with them all. If anyone at all in this stupid world deserved to be spared of that, it was Steven Grant Rogers.

“Hey, ‘Tasha...good morning,” he said as he glanced up, his eyes brightening and a small genuine smile on his lips.

She wanted to be ill, but instead she used her skill to mask her thoughts. “Hey, good morning,” she echoed, forcing herself to walk closer.

She comprehended now, a little more. “You were waiting, weren’t you? Until...Peggy…”

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “I didn’t want to be half a world away when it happened, unable to say goodbye. And I needed to do some fundraising.”

His eyes scanned over the documents again. “A lot of these are in languages I can’t read. Polish, maybe? Ukrainian?” He wanted her help. She knew that. If she gave it, he'd be more determined that ever to take up his shield and dive headfirst into the shadows where souls were taken, broken down, and reforged into living weapons. An underworld. A hell. There were more ways that one to destroy a man. Or a woman, for that matter. Learn their obsessions, the very things they cannot do without, and you can break anyone.

Natasha just stood there restlessly, her gaze affixed to his plate. He hopped to his feet. “Oh, Geeze, Nat! I am so sorry. I didn’t offer you breakfast. There’s just the basics, but I can run out. Coffee?” He started walking towards the kitchenette counter.

Good. An in. She raised an eyebrow and asked sultrily. “What? Not used to overnight guests?”

The way he abashedly lifted his eyebrows and gave a little sheepish smile to her was endearing. “I think you’ll be proud. I did go on a few dates, since you left. None of them worked out.”

She padded behind him. “No chemistry, then?”

He poured her a cup in a plain mug, offering it to her. They both took their coffee black. In his youth, he had no sweeteners. She had a reputation to maintain.

“That, and I knew I was going to be leaving at any time to find Bucky. That would be really unfair to someone.”

Natasha shrugged and took the first sip of the brew. “They could always go with you. I mean, there are risks, but...there's a certain amount of romance, too.” She studied him closely, surreptitiously. 

Steve shook his head, gaze cast down. “When Peggy and I...Well, we just waited. Because if something happened in the field...Someone from HYDRA learned...” His head snapped up to her and he clenched his jaw, swallowing. "She was tough; tougher than me when it came to risks like that. But I'm stupidly old-fashioned. Sentimental. I don't think I...well...my judgement would be too clouded. And Bucky's _personal_. It's not to save lives. It's just..."

She watched as the realization of what he was saying to himself built like storm clouds in his sky-blue eyes.

"So," he asked, softly. "Did you ever fall for someone? All those years in Russia?"

"Emotional attachment was weakness, Steve," she toned, determined to maintain control. She could talk about it in the third-person. "Operatives weren't allowed it. Not even casually. Love was a weapon that would be turned upon you, so we disarmed ourselves or our handlers intervened. That's what it took to be an ideal spy or an perfect soldier."

"That's horrible, Natasha," he whispered, and that earnest way that made her doubly protective. Doubly invested in convincing him to drop the whole Winter Soldier thing entirely, as she had. Ghosts were best mourned; life was best lived, while there was a chance, while you could turn back. While your heart wasn't in ruins and every inch back to humanity didn't cost countless sleepless nights, wrestling with demons, screaming into pillows, standing in showers until the water ran cold.

"Old habits die hard, Rogers."

He didn't need to be a trained interrogator to get her meaning. Now he was reminded how he could be manipulated and his objectives undermined if he let himself care too much. How real love and the ways of heroes and spies, super-soldiers and assassins, were fundamentally incompatible. Liabilities. Certainly, Steve had sensed even when he could not articulate it, when he turned down every prospective date she had offered. Now he had a name for it.

Natasha had so very artfully cut him, he wasn’t even angry at her. He just stared at her for a moment, then blinked. "Yeah, got it."

Steve turned towards the door, finding a pair of loafers. “I’m going to get some eggs and pancake mix. I’ll be back in a bit.” He grabbed his leather jacket and motorcycle helmet and just ever-to-quickly, stepped out the door. He didn’t bother locking it behind him.

The Black Widow hadn’t lost her edge.

Still Natasha felt tears sting her eyes, and she whispered to the empty studio. “It’s for your own good, Rogers. Please, believe me. Let Bucky go. Hang up the shield. Please.”


	7. Chapter 7

When Steve returned, it was not just with breakfast, but with fixings for lunch too. Natasha understood that her time here with him was at an end. She had seen it through, given Steve a few brutal truths that even men of integrity didn't like to hear, just like Clint prompted. It was enough. She had already made arrangements.

He was polite to her. Not the “ma’am”-polite when he first met her on the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier, but the polite that had closed his emotional doors to her. It was done, she guessed. Mission. Fucking. Accomplished.

She watched him scoop up the docs on the Winter Soldier and stuff them back into the folder haphazardly, dropping it on top of a stereo unit he probably bought second-hand. A bunch of CDs were stacked next to it that she never got to hear him play.

Natasha picked at the last of her pancakes. “I’ve got a flight booked for 2130. I can jam earlier than that. If it’s best,” she explained.

Steve leaned back on one of his muraled walls, tucking his hands under his arms. “How about staying for dinner at least? There’s this pretty good Thai place about a six-block walk. My treat; if you can do me one last favor?”

She arched an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

“Sam and I have an afternoon run, first since Peggy….well. I’d really like to talk to him. The thing is, the gallery’s scheduled a pick-up for the showing. Dropping off some supplies, too. They can’t give me an exact time. I’ve tagged everything that should go with a green sticker….”

“So...I show them in? Point them to the right stuff?”

Steve nodded. “It’s a big help, Nat. Thanks.”

She forced herself to smile as she finished her juice. “Sam’s a great wingman, isn’t he?”

He smiled back at her, a bit of his light returning. “One of the best.”


	8. Chapter 8

Steve was off his usual lap time and he knew Sam sensed it. It was good to jog and cleared his head a bit, but a part of him was still at the loft and did not want to leave. Not with Natasha there. However impossible it was to rekindle that one special night with her before the Triskelion op.

He and Sam took a long cool-down walk together, strolling around the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, as they had done for so many days since the late spring. Since she pulled up in that black Corvette and joked about picking up a fossil.

“You know, you didn’t have to come out,” Sam goaded, good-naturedly. “You’re a morning-type guy, but I can understand if you’re getting a little late to bed these days…”

Steve shrugged. “She’s going. Tonight.”

“Fuck, man!” Sam exclaimed. “She just got here!”

Steve threw himself on a bench, and Sam settled himself down beside. Steve shook his head, gazing out to the green waters of the pool.

“Something’s eating at her, Sam. I brought up Bucky, and she just...I don’t get it.” He sighed. “Back at Fury’s grave, she gave me his file, but warns me not to pursue it. She knows she can help translate, but she hasn’t offered a single glance at anything I pull out.” Steve scowled. “I think there’s something she’s not telling me, something about her and him in the past.”

Sam wiped his brow and neck with a towel. “He’s like...shot her twice?”

Steve rubbed his lips. “Yeah. Once in Iran or Ukraine about four, five years ago? Natasha’s tough as nails. I’ve seen her shrug off concussions, bullet holes, knife wounds, whatever…” Then another memory. "She said, just after Fury was killed, that she looked for him once herself. Revenge? A mission?"

Sam took a swig of water from his bottle. “I don’t know what to tell you, brother. Sometimes the vets that come into group...they’re shaking off much more than what happened to them since they enlisted.” Sam looked Steve in the eye. “She ever talk to you about her life before S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

Steve blinked. “No. No, she doesn’t.”

Sam squeezed his shoulder. “Maybe you should ask, like with that straight-forward, honest thing you do. You’re friends...or something...right? Saved each other’s lives a few times? That should help.”

Steve found himself narrowing his eyes. An idea bloomed like a sudden flower. “Of course!” He almost laughed. “Oh, Sam. Thanks. I gotta go…” Steve started fishing for the phone in his pocket, rising to his feet and hustling back to his motorcycle. He turned around to walk backwards for a moment, waving to his buddy still on the bench. “I’ll text you…?”

Sam grinned and shook his head, waving back. “Yeah, man. I’m here!”

Steve scrolled through the addresses on his phone till he found P. Potts. She picked up on the second ring. "Hey, Pepper. It’s Steve.” … “Yeah, I think the showing’s set. They’re picking up stuff today.” He told himself to be brave, for Natasha’s sake. “I’ve got a rather urgent and, well, personal favor to ask.” … “Can you get me Clint Barton’s number?”


	9. Chapter 9

Showered and dressed, Natasha neatened Steve’s loft while awaiting the arrival of of the gallery hands. She washed and dried the dishes, arranged the futon. She even did a bit of yoga to relax herself and stretch the muscles and tendons that had not seen real action for months. She thought of her next moves. Perhaps she’d suck up her pride with Stark and join Clint after all in that security work.

Her fingers brushed the across the top of the sketchbook that Steve held on the evening of Peggy’s funeral, when she awoke from her jet-lagged slumber to find him tracing her portrait with tears in his eyes. However, her curiosity was outweighed by her good sense, and she passed it over.

There was a rumble of a cargo truck in the alley below, and not long after that, a buzz at the loft’s call system. She matched the name of the gallery with the name on the truck and and also the name of the staff member with what Steve had provided her on a business card. If this was a sting, it was an elaborate one. And besides, Steve had already said Pepper Potts was involved. So she buzzed them in.

Steve painted on large canvases in broad and sure strokes. The works ready for the gallery were, for the most part, stacked near a secondary door that lead to a freight elevator. In the right, lower-hand corner of each was his signature, S G Rogers.

She watched as every one of his works was taken in turn, looking at the top corner of each for a green sticky note that Steve had adhered to the protective cardboard corner caps, before they were wrapped up for their further transport.

Natasha watched them go, one by one, like a slideshow. With some of them, she had an inkling of his inspiration. With others, she was in the dark.

“Stop.”

“Ma’am?” one of the gallery staff asked.

She swallowed and her stomach flitted. “Bring that one into the light.”

And so the 5 foot by 7 foot canvas was brought towards the loft’s windows, and set down before her.

The work was of a slight but lithe woman, wearing a white sleeveless slip. She sat amidst iron bars, not quite a cage. Maybe a fire-escape. Her bare knees and feet extended gracefully; her skin looked a bit pale and cold. A wind from her back blew her scarlet-red hair in a way that her face could not be seen. From a cupped and balletic hand (that she raised reverently above the black confines into a pale blue sky) flew doves and a hundred white scraps of paper, such that they could not be told from one another without close study.

Natasha blinked, and then ripped the green post-it from its corner. “I’m sorry, it’s not for sale.”

She had made a horrible mistake. She shouldn't have been pushing him away. She should have been drawing him closer. It was too late. How could it not be too late? 

“Ma’am?”

“There’s been a mistake,” she growled. “It’s not for sale.”

The mover backed off. “Sure! No problem.”

Natasha paced for a moment, ran a hand through her hair, then returned back to the last of the other paintings. But she really wasn’t looking anymore.

Her hand reached for her cell-phone, clenched it. But in the end, she called no one. She waited for the gallery’s truck to pull away, and then started racing down the stairs with her borrowed keys and herself to the nearest corner liquor store. But the purr of a nearing motorcycle engine chased her back.

She went to the bathroom and gazed at her killer/liar self in the mirror, not the one given new life by a soldier-artist’s hand.

“A few more hours, Natalia,” she stated to herself. “That's all you have to give. Make it a memory he can keep.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notice: This chapter contains a very brief, non-explicit description of sexual violence.

Steve hooked his keys just inside the front entry to the loft and set down his helmet, closing and locking the door behind him. It seemed the gallery had picked up the works he had prepped to go. As he grabbed a towel for his post-run rinse, he found Natasha on the futon, reading a book.

One of the paintings he had marked for the showing had not made it into the truck after all. The painting of her. Steve’s stomach lurched, and he knew the depths of his feelings about her were laid out bare. He no longer had much ground to stand on if he attempted to deny that Natasha meant much more to him than that single intimate night warranted. The crazy thing was that he wasn't entirely sure _why._ The only thing he could do now was to go forward with his plan, let it play out. Even if it was a taste of the very danger he had hoped to avoid.

“Hey, Natasha. All packed?” he asked.

“I am.” Her eyes barely left the pages of her book, her voice casual. “Steve, please don’t sell it. I don’t want it in the hands of strangers.”

He smiled faintly, touched. “Alright, I won’t. I'll keep it safe. But can I at least show it? It’s a big part of why the gallery had interest in the first place.”

She nodded, almost imperceptibly. 

“Good. I’m going to duck my head in the shower.” He took a few steps away from her. “Would you throw on some tunes? Anything in the stacks. Anything you are in the mood for.”

“Sure,” she set her book aside, and gracefully padded towards the stereo. “I can do that.”

As he changed into a beat-up set of clothes he reserved for painting, the strains of classical music -- Stravinsky, he guessed -- filled the loft. Natasha was still looking at his collection, running her finger down the cases of CDs title by title.

“Pretty impressive, Rogers,” she said warmly. “I think I can officially declare you caught up with the 21st century.”

He nodded. “One of these days I’ll digitize them. It just...still feels more solid, you know? Having the disks?”

She turned around and her brow knitted briefly in confusion. “Pretty casual for going out to dinner, don’t you think?”

He chuckled, walking past her to grab a flat-head screwdriver from a toolbox. “We still have a few hours, and I could use a hand with something. The gallery brought the drop-cloths and the primer, right?”

“I think so,” she responded, her curiosity tinged in her voice, following him.

“I have to get rid of the murals before I go. It’s in the lease. Work goes much more quickly with two sets of hands. Here.” He handed her a few folded canvas squares. “Help me spread them out.”

“It seems a shame,” she stated, tucking the canvas close to a baseboard. “I really like them.”

Steve shrugged as he used the screwdriver to pry open a gallon can of the white paint, trying not to think to heavily about what she was _really_ saying. “Well…” He began, and then stopped himself. The mood between them was easy for once, and he didn’t want to spoil it quite yet. “Hey, I bet you didn’t bring anything worn out to paint in, did you?”

She shook her head, her lips twitching a wry smile. “Nope.”

He pointed with his chin. “Look in that basket by the bathroom door. There should be a few t-shirts your size.”

“ _My_ size?” she teased. “Maybe you _have_ had overnight guests.”

He generously poured the primer into two trays. “I bought the smalls by mistake. It happens when that is what you’ve been wearing for most of your adult life.” Steve watched her undress out of the corner of his eye, throwing on the navy-blue t-shirt over her simple black underwear. “I was going to donate them, but I think this is a better cause.”

A smile on her lips, she walked back down to where he awaited with the paint. She twirled once playfully before him. “High fashion, right?”

As he stood up, her caught her waist with his left arm, drawing her closer to him. Her chin tilted up, and her green eyes stared back at him; they were soft with desire and something else. Steve felt a little weak in the knees.

“Close your eyes,” he whispered, intoned with the gentlest of commands, and she obeyed. Natasha's face softened in a way so vulnerable and inviting that maybe, maybe it was real.

But he didn’t kiss her, even though he so much wanted to. To taste her in anyway he could before she evaporated as she intended. He had a greater mission. His paint-laden fingertips traced a simple shape on the fabric just to the right of her heart.

“Okay, open them.” She did so, and looked down at his handiwork, a gleaming five-pointed star, at the center of her chest. “What do you think, Captain Romanova?” He let his hold on her loosen.

Natasha actually laughed, crouching briefly around her tightening abdomen and then standing once again. He had surprised her, he figured; something very rare in her former line of work. Her eyebrows lifted. “Does it come with the shield, too?”

“Now,” he mock-chided, picking up a paint roller. “Don’t get greedy.” He handed her another, then squatted to pick up the primer in the roller.

He gazed at the mural, and pressed a hand to it. The hours of meditation he spent here, transforming the walls while he let the madness and lust, the anger and grief, the love and brutality, the greyness and ambiguity of the past seventy years of collective history enter him through the musicianship of artists greater than he. How much had Steve transformed? Who was he now? Bucky had just barely recognized him. Was it the Captain America armored get-up Howard Stark had built for him that Buck recognized? The remembered promise to go to the end of the line for each other?

Steve had no answers, but this shifting world-scape must all be a part of him now, an internal legacy; so he made the first stroke, obliterating a blue building with with half-lit windows in a swath of alabaster.

He heard Natasha let out a breath she was holding, then she joined him in the task. They worked in silence for a few minutes.

Steve swallowed, feeling the tightness in his chest. What he was about to do would cork-screw and descend very, very fast into an abyss. He sensed it. Ten times faster than the Coney Island Cyclone ride of the dare, a hundred times more dangerous. He could only hope that she and he could be strong enough to see each other through it.

“Why is it whenever I bring up Bucky or his file, you deflect it?” he asked bluntly.

She continued painting over the mural. “He’s put a couple of bullets through me in the past five years, Rogers. I think I have every reason to be upset and to keep my friends from his scope.”

Steve let out a frustrated sigh. “You know what he means to me, Nat. You know why I need to go after him.”

She tried to neutrally reply, but even he could detect the layered emotion. “I do.”

"He _saw_ me, 'Tasha. He spared me. You don't think that there is something in him that can still be saved? Brought back from what he was?" 

"Steve..." she pleaded, biting her lips. Still holding back. 

He picked up more paint, reaching up to even where she, on her tiptoes, could not. “I am not made of porcelain, you know,” he asserted. “In the war, we saw a lot of fucked-up shit. The stuff that didn’t make it to propaganda films. Experiments on captured enemies. Kids being recruited -- if that’s what you want to call it -- to serve as the next generation of killers in the name of making a perfected world.”

She stopped her work, her head bowed, her face obscured.

“Something happened between you and Bucky. Something happened to you both, before S.H.I.E.L.D.. I need to know what that was, Natasha,” he urged, his mouth going dry.

Her voice was harsh, on the edge of breaking. “No. No you don’t. Leave it, Rogers. Please.”

He was aware of her pattern now. Of using his last name to distance herself. Disassociation is what Sam called it, a psychological term to hold at arms-length something utterly painful, perhaps debilitating.

Steve dropped the paint tool and summoned up all his nerve to be cruel to her, counter to every one of his instincts. “You think I’m stupid and weak and naive?!" he snapped. "A golden boy who -- for his own fucking _good_ \-- has to be kept from the truth of you?! The truth of him?!”

His words came like a slap, a sucker punch, shocking her. She threw her roller with savage force at the paint can, upsetting it. Then she wrapped her arms around herself, tossing her back to the freshly coated wall. She glared at him with surprised hurt etched in every line of her face. He could feel her then mentally square up against him, deciding something.

Natasha nodded head slowly, and then she stared at her bare feet standing in a slick of white. “I was sixteen when I met him. The Winter Soldier was brought into my Academy. The authorities there locked us together in a dark...maze. I thought he was going to help me, but he just…” Her composure was quickly melting away. “He shoved me to the floor and he--" Maybe she censored herself for his sake. "I figured I had to fight him off. I did. But then they…We were...No. I can't go back. I _can't._ ”

She collapsed to the ground, pressing the heels of her hands into her own eyes, her shoulders silently shaking. "He should be _forgotten_ ," she choked. "That's the only way you survive."

Her revelation was a knock-out blow, and he felt his jaw slacken, every tiny and large muscle clenching to the point of aching. The image of Bucky atop her with that predator's look in his eyes, wounding her that way...

Steve had no idea what emotion would conquer the others until his vision blackened with rage and despair filling his lungs as surely as air. His head pounded and fire ran through his veins. He wanted to make oaths, malevolent oaths; to find the Winter Soldier only to kill him. Like he should have done when he had the chance. Even if the man had once been his blood-brother, certainly the monster capable of _that_ needed to be destroyed. Destroyed in body, sure. Destroyed in memory? That was the only recourse Natasha had, the one she begged Steve to take for himself. No wonder...

She was the thing that drew him back to the moment; her anguish, her pain. Here, now. Not there, then. No. He nearly slipped in the pool of spilled paint, catching himself as he dropped his own roller and knelt down to her. Her eyes were starting to glaze over. She was almost unreachable, her mind stepping into the dark place of brutalities that she may never return from.

He cupped her face with infinite care, brushed her cheekbones with his thumbs. “Stay with me,” he pleaded softly. “Stay with me. Stay with me.” Every iteration became a prayer, of everything his heart longed to say to her, every wrong done to her he wanted to work with her to make right. “Stay with me, Natalia...stay with me,” he whispered over and over, tears welling in his eyes. "It won't happen again. Never again."

Her whole body shuddered then, and she made a keening noise that he didn’t think was possible for a human to make. Steve took Natasha into his arms, his lap, soaking her and him in yet more of the ivory liquid that smeared all over the floor.

“I didn’t mean for you to know. I couldn't tell you. He was your best friend... and now, when you look at me...when you touch me...” she hiccuped. “You're still...I'm sorry I didn't tell you, from the start. Before we...I just wanted to feel something that wasn't a part of a mission...that was...personal.”

His hands stroked her hair, and he said gently. “Natalia, Natasha...human beings don't have an on-off switch. One good knock on the head doesn't change people instantly, not often, but we can talk later about Loki's sceptre. What your handlers did to you, what Bucky's captors did to him, I don't expect it to magically be undone because I happen to stand before you or him with symbols of freedom and opportunity plastered all over me. You know I tell the truth, and this truth is for you: You never deserved any of what happened to you.”

He held her with all the tenderness he could muster as his words broke a dam in her and her sobbing violently shook her acrobat’s frame. Again and again, she continued to choke out apologies and he continued to soothe her. It occurred to Steve that he had never witnessed her cry like this. He had seen a few glassy eyes, a few pretty tears, but never this. It was a vulnerability that he thought she had long ago disallowed herself. The KGB-or-whatever bastards may not have strapped her to a chair, but they had done just as much to warp her as HYDRA had done to Buck. No wonder she didn't use her childhood name at S.H.I.E.L.D..

Natasha’s weeping eventually found its end, and he shifted them both so that he could rest his back upon the wall. She settled her head on his shoulder, giving a shuddering sigh and closing her eyes, drifting into the dull, hazy sleep after grief. Steve tugged at the corner of a mostly-dry ground cloth to cover their legs and keep them a bit warmer. He dared not disturb her peace, not for a while yet.

Steve watched the daylight slip away through the loft’s windows into another sunset. He let his thoughts drift again to Peggy, to the fate of his childhood friend and fighting companion, to the tough woman that had so many horrors done to her, but who still managed to have enough compassion enough to care for and try to protect _him_.

Natasha was so beautiful in her way, and the Sergeant James Barnes of 1944 would have called his best friend an idiot for not pressing his interest. _'She's a woman who has made her invitation quite clear. Just see where it leads.' 'A dance isn't a walk down the aisle, Steve.' 'Flirt a little; it doesn't have to head straight to the bedroom.'_ Buck and he were so alike and so different. Steve was always trying to work out every move and strategy to its conclusion; Buck mostly trusted instinct and adapted as needed. The two could swap each other's mindsets from long familiarity, and it had saved Steve's life on more than one occasion. Especially on the run after Fury's death. With Natasha at his side, it tasted so familiar.

God, had it been Natasha and not Peggy that showed up in that London bar above the SSR regional HQ in that red dress and heels, Buck may not have been so gracious as to give his best friend an uncontested shot at her affection.

Steve frowned deeply as he continued still to hold her with all protective intent, as his thoughts circled back to Natasha's revelation. The Winter Soldier had violated her. Steve had no choice but to believe it was on sick and twisted orders. The Bucky that Steve remembered would never have done such a thing, and the guilt of it could drive him to put a bullet through his head, should the memory resurface. But that wouldn't happen. Steve was going after him; he'd be able to talk his friend through it. Steve would save Buck from the brink, once and for all. 

Lost in recollections, much time passed without his awareness. Natasha and he became a breathing sculpture, covered in the drying white, transformed into living marble. Eventually, Steve looked upon the handprints and smudges he had left on her skin and that she had left on his with a certain fondness and, he realized, still very much a yearning, like he looked at the painting he made of her. And the small portrait he had stolen from her sleeping face just a few dozen hours ago.

Natasha eventually awoke with a start, and she struggled to stand before realizing that she was still in Steve’s arms.

“The plane!” she exclaimed in drowsy panic. “What time is it?!”

Steve smiled to himself as he helped her off the paint-stained floor. “There is no plane, Natasha.”

“What?!” She blinked at him surprised. Also, she seemed to realize she was half-covered in dried paint for the first time. She stared at her whitened hands as if they were not her own, transfixed.

Steve repeated. “There is no plane. I called Clint and asked him not to send it. I told him I needed to talk to you, and I told him why. So he stopped it from coming to D.C..”

Confusion passed her features. “You conspired?!” she blurted.

Steve couldn't help but smile, give an abashed look at the ground.

“You played me…?” she breathed in disbelief. Then her tone changed to one of admiration. “Captain America _played_ me!”

He tried raking a hand through his paint-stiffened hair, and shrugged. “Well, only a little. Clint will keep the secret. We can’t have anyone thinking the famous Black Widow has gotten soft…”

Natasha tentatively smiled at him. It was something pure, something that could banish ghosts, something that could very well make him happy. If he chose it; if he pressed his interest.

She then held out her arms to him, flipping her wrists to see it all. “What is this?” She asked like there was some great significance. Another story that maybe someday, with enough trust in him, she would share.

“Interior latex primer paint. It’ll come off with some soap and water and a good hard scrubbing." Some things could be made new again with just a little elbow-grease and effort. Could they be? "I’ll get your back if you get mine?” He offered her one of his assuring, tender smiles. “That is, if you think it wouldn’t be too scandalous to share a long hot shower with Captain Rogers, paragon of virtue…?”

When she deadpanned, “I’ll...um...try to keep my hands to myself?” Steve knew that Natasha was on her way in forgiving him for his harsh words, even though there was something still a bit haunted on her face. It would be okay. He'd remind her that their bodies were for more than violence. They could be gentle and kind with each other; when it came to sex, they always had been. 

“Please don’t,” Steve purred, drawing her close again. Yes, the invitation of her eyes was there. He finally kissed her the way he ached to do hours ago. Her mouth responded roughly, a little desperate, like she was half-expecting to find someone else embracing her when she closed her eyes. Then it softened as if she was returning to the way she remembered they kissed, deep and slow. As their lips and tongues swept over each other, Steve became determined to have Natasha as long as they both could bear waltzing around all the elephants in the room.


	11. Chapter 11

Natasha and Steve learned a new dance with one another, a complicated weaving of desire and denial, a tightwire act without a net.

Natasha now understood completely why Clint had drawn hard lines with the types of physical affections he gave her or would accept from her. For years, it seemed a bit ridiculous to her. 

Then she recalled the dangers of how so-called 'casual, feel-good' sex that Agents sometimes indulged in could, with the right circumstances, turn into true love-making. It could, at the very conclusion, result in the utter loss of her heart. Natasha played the edge of that so many times with her marks and manage to remain just in control; it was a part of what Clint called her genius. She had only fallen once, long ago, and it nearly destroyed her. And like that once, this wasn't a game with Steve or a mission. She should have known better, but the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. threw all the old rules to the winds. It made her reckless, made her recall what it was to yearn to be something else other than what handlers wanted of her. It tempted her to remember.

Her bond with -- no her _debt to_ \-- Clint had already compromised her once or twice, used against her by her enemies to pull her strings, just like a marionette. She knew Nick Fury had counted on it to keep her in line at S.H.I.E.L.D.. She witnessed how Loki had used it to goad her into his fight. But no matter what happened to Clint, she was still capable of action, of putting any emotion aside and completing her mission. And, more importantly, still doing whatever it took to survive.

She could not permit herself to love Steve Rogers, she reminded herself, and yet she was helpless and disarmed in his tender, restrained reverence. He had the good sense not to force into the light what was best left unsaid. She studied the reflections of windows and mirrors in his studio too many times these days, dreamlike reminiscences of Steve's efficient grace and that easy strength in the stride of another soldier. The shade walked almost step-to-step with his shining companion; two halves of the same lethal coin. Steve was a presence of flesh-and-blood, not simply a shadow of memory; the solidity of it unwittingly tempted her into a full-on relapse of foolish, girlish, costly sentiments that had no place in the life of the Black Widow.

She had a thousand ways to hurt Steve, to push him away, to end it. But she could never summon the nerve. Steve had no agenda with her, nothing he wanted from her but her companionship and to revel in the ways she rediscovered bits-and-pieces of joy and goodness and kindness within herself. He called those her “sparks,” and “Sparks” evolved into his term of endearment for her, like Clint called her “kiddo." In his ways, Steve helped her to find more tatters of her true self; they were not gone after all, but hidden so very well she had almost lost them forever.

Steve colluded with her in only one shared self-deception, one web of lies. That maybe, just maybe, he wouldn't chase the Winter Soldier after all. That maybe he'd call it off. That maybe their time could last.


	12. Chapter 12

Natasha’s foot grazed Steve's ear as he ducked her kick. His attempt to snatch her ankle was a micro-second too slow, and she wheeled out of his range.

“When you asked me out dancing, I didn’t think _this_ is what you had in mind!” Steve exclaimed as they continued to spar, trading punches and kicks, blocks and sweeps, holds and locks. He pulled his blows; she didn’t fight dirty.

They did this every few days. Took his motorcycle out to the countryside with a picnic lunch to some out-of-the-way park or preserve where they could practice without much notice. 

“Gotta keep your edge, Rogers," she stated matter-of-factually. "Barnes may or may not give you a fight when you catch up to him. Or he catches up to you.” 

The cool fall air was invigorating, and their bout eventually became more relaxed and conversational.

Rather than dwell on difficult thoughts about Bucky, Steve made an observation after he swept his leg low, knocking Natasha on her back, feeling a twinge of regret at the move. But she was tough and uncomplaining. “I never saw you and Barton train like this together, in all my time at S.H.I.E.L.D..”

“And you never will.” She vaulted back to her feet, her red-hair flashing. “We don’t want to get used to each other’s styles. It’s a fail-safe. In case one of us needs to take the other out, we didn’t want there to be a stalemate. It’s what helped me to get the upper-hand on him when Loki controlled him; it allowed me to bring him back.”

She feigned as if she was going to rush him and throw a forward kick, but then used her momentum to instead launch herself against a tree, grasping a branch and swung herself upon his back, hooking her knees around his shoulders. If she had a garrotte or her tech, Natasha would have the upper hand on him. 

Rather than drop and roll with her, Steve just grasped her legs and gave them a light squeeze. “Good. Let’s break.”

“Clint was off his game, too,” she mused, sliding herself down, her body gliding against Steve’s in a way that electrified him. “It’s like a small piece of him, a tiny part of him, didn’t want to be fighting me.”

Steve snatched a water-bottle from his backpack. He cracked it open, offering her the first sip; one of those gentlemanly habits of his that he knew she found endearing. Natasha smiled and drank, passing the bottle back to him.

Natasha began to stretch, graceful limbs moving like a sapling’s bend in the wind. Steve propped himself against a trunk and indulgently watched her. 

“Back in Odessa,” she offered. “The Winter Soldier had me dead to rights. He could have gotten his target with a round through my spine. And when I was bleeding out, he could have put a second bullet in my head.” She met Steve’s gaze. “But he didn’t. There still may be something there within him, Steve. Something that remembers being something other than a killer.”

Steve smiled, feeling a bit of sadness creep in. “That’s a lovely sentiment, Sparks.”

She shrugged, turning away her head for a moment. “I must be turning over a new leaf.”


	13. Chapter 13

_“Again.”_ The word, whispered in the shifting, shadowy maze of her dream-scape. Natasha clenched her trembling hands around the knife that was conjured from memory. He was close in the half-darkness, so close she could hear his breath.

She could not hesitate, and so she threw herself on top of him, straddling him. 

“Natasha?” He voiced, shifting beneath her, tensing. “Natasha?!”

She raised her hands to strike. But his eyes, widened with alarm, were wrong. Too brilliantly blue, and his hair was not the shock of dark-brown. His body was whole, both hands on her hips warm and gentle. They were in bed together.

She blinked. “Steve?”

“Yeah,” he confirmed.

The tatters of her nightmare lifted. She frowned, finding no blade in her hands.

“Are you alright?” she asked. “I didn’t…?”

Steve shook his head, pressing his palm to her cheek. “You just startled me.” He took a deep breath. “Do you want to try to go back to sleep? Or go for a ride? Or just...you know, be held?”

They held each other often in that week before Steve’s gallery showing and eventual departure to track down the Winter Soldier. He was terrorized by the grief of losing Barnes; once long ago; without his quest, now and forever. She was terrified of so much more; things she didn't explain to him.

Sometimes, while the sweat cooled on their bodies after love-making, Natasha and Steve would tell each other stories of their past. He knew now that she was an orphan; she learned that he never really knew his father. He learned of how as a child, she wanted to be an aerialist in the circus; she learned about his enjoyment of animated cartoons. But there were still things, large gaps in her life she didn't recount, and Steve honored that, never pressing.

Natasha slid off of him and reached for the burner cell she kept by the futon. The screen read 5:26 AM. “Might as well get up...you got a jog with Sam in a few hours, anyway?”

“I do,” he responded, but as she was turning to rise from the futon, Steve wrapped his arms around her, and kissed her shoulder, burying his face in her hair for a moment. Time was catching up to them; decisions loomed.

Natasha started the coffee maker and turned on the loft’s lights. The space was emptier now than when she had first arrived. Paintings went to the gallery, the artist supplies donated to a local high school, the wooden floor sanded and free of the accidental stains. His murals were painted over, cleanly white at last.

There was only one last work that remained: the dossier of the Winter Soldier. Steve and Natasha worked daily on it, pinning the various documents up in chronological order (as much as they could tell), then used colored yarn to put potential connections together. Natasha taught him how to recognize and speak out the alternative alphabets, a bit of the Russian language. He was a quick study. 

There were times that Natasha’s hand trembled as she pulled taught another string from one tacked document to another, and a pained look crossed Steve’s face. “Natasha. You don’t have to do this,” he reminded her for the upteenth time.

She found her bravest face for him. “I think I do, Steve. He's everything to you. And you have a real chance. He _knows_ you.”

Arnim Zola’s involvement was undeniable. Unfortunately, Zola was beyond the possibility to interrogate. January 1991; a KGB mention of a turned P.O.W. sent covertly to the United States. Howard and Maria Stark’s accident was the same year. Coincidence? She and Steve debated the possibility.

Steve changed into his workout clothes and blended himself a quick smoothie like many 21st century, health-conscious 30-somethings. Natasha just studied the web, line to line to line.

He offered her a mug of coffee, and she wrapped her hands around it with a cursory thanks.

“You figured out what you are going to wear for the showing?” Steve asked casually.

Natasha shrugged without turning herself away from their handiwork. “I was thinking of slipping in as a part of the catering staff. It’s a good cover. When is the last time you remembered the face of someone in black serving you an o'er deuve?”

Steve replied evenly. “It’s a special night, Natasha. I’d like you to be there as you.”

Natasha shook her head, feeling a bit of sorrow and frustration. “And have it turn into a media circus? It’s supposed to be about your art, Steve. Not about an international counter-intelligence scandal that reached all the way to the White House.”

His arm wrapped around her, and she felt his warmth against her back. She pressed against him out of instinct. “Pepper’s arranged for the security,” he explained. “And the only member of the press invited in is a social media consultant from the Washington Post; she’s been ‘vetted’. That’s the term she used; which I guess means clearance, of sorts.”

“I really don’t know…” Natasha offered. She forced herself to sip her coffee.

Steve countered with, “I have something to try to convince you. Wait here.” And then he was gone back to the kitchenette to rest his glass in the sink and then to find his leather motorcycle jacket. From an inner pocket, he pulled out something about the size of a CD case, walking back to her.

“Close your eyes,” he said.

That made Natasha smile, despite herself. She let her lids fall. “You gonna finger-paint me again?” The coffee mug was gently pried from her clasp. His fingers brushed her hair to one shoulder. Something cool and silky and dense was laced around her neck.

“Not just yet,” he whispered, then pressed something else into her palm.

“Pearls…” she breathed, pivoting around to face him and cracking her eyes open and looking into her hand. Two gleaming drop earrings lay there. Cultured, with incredible luster and weight, not cheap knock-offs.

“So much for a surprise,” Steve said.

The back of her fingers drifted to her throat, feeling them bead by bead. She smiled faintly, thinking back to the time when she had shown him the pearl between her legs. Steve may have guessed what she was thinking, because his ears flushed and a bit of that old Rogers' shyness came through.

“They are beautiful, Steve,” she confirmed. “Very classic; they’ll never go out of style.”

Steve’s smile blossomed, first looking to her and then to her feet. “My mother wore something like them. When she still had the strength to go out. Well…” His brows lifted and looked at her again. “Will you, Sparks?”

The boyish anticipation charmed her, and she acquiesced. “I’ll look for a dress today.” Many times in her life a gift was given only to manipulate. But there was nothing like that in Steve. Only to see her fully herself and adorned with a measure of his affection.

A half-remembered poem came to her mind, likely from when her training was still guised in self-mastery and pleasure, and not lies and blood and death.

There is some kiss we want with  
our whole lives, the touch of  
spirit on the body. Seawater  
begs the pearl to break its shell. 

How was it that Steve could be so kind and casual, while she, the famous Black Widow, was quietly losing her heart?


	14. Chapter 14

The gallery reception for Steve’s paintings turned out to be a first reunion for many of the Avengers since the Battle of New York. It seemed strange to be gathering under positive circumstances. Natasha almost wished that it was a global threat and not a social occasion that brought her back into Stark’s and Banner’s company; then she could simply be the cool, smart-witted, and deadly spy everyone expected of her.

As the limousine neared their destination, Natasha felt a bit dizzy and unbalanced. She wanted desperately to have a cover, something to protect her from feeling so uncertain. Still, she couldn’t hide from the question forever.

“Steve, when somebody asks about us…?” she finally managed.

“You’re my date,” Steve responded, quickly, his tone brooking no argument. But then he took his time with the next. “And my friend, right?”

He had no idea of how very close he was to breaking her heart with those words. She turned to look out at the gathering crowds along the sidewalk rather than let him see her face, not until she could compose herself. Steve made his choice; he was leaving her and going after Bucky. Natasha was determined not to let the revelation ruin her evening. She could be his friend; it was what he asked of her in that stolen pick-up truck months ago on their way to Camp Lehigh; it is what she was prepared to be.

“Always,” she confirmed, squeezing his hand as the vehicle rolled to a stop in front of the steps to a modern, multi-storied building of steel and glass.

The chauffeur opened the door to the limo. Steve stepped out first; still holding Natasha’s hand, he gallantly guided her out into the popping flashes of a thousand cameras, the shouts of “Captain America!” and “Steve! Steve Rogers!” Steve smiled and waved to the crowd behind the security detail, but he did not pause to sign any autographs. The gallery doors were already behind them when she heard the first “Natasha!”

Steve’s hand on the small of her back gently eased her to a side hallway, out of the view of the paparazzi. She was still a little dazed. “It’ll get easier, Sparks. In fact, it’s about to get a lot easier.”

A familiar and welcome presence joined them, someone Natasha sensed even before she could name. “You clean up pretty good, ‘Tasha.”

“Clint!” Steve stepped back as Natasha launched herself into a fierce hug. Clint was dressed in plain black, a few com devices attached to his belt. “Security duty?”

Clint nodded, finally releasing her. “Someone’s got to keep an eye on things while you and Stark party.” Clint looked to Steve. “You’ve taken good care of her.”

Steve smiled slightly, running his hand through his hair. “Thanks for the help with that.”

Clint said nothing more to Steve and held her at arm’s length so he could get a better look at her dress and hair. “Navy, huh?”

Natasha laughed and punched Clint playfully in the arm.


	15. Chapter 15

Steve escorted Natasha to introduce her to the gallery owner, an aging and laid-back man in his early-80’s with a Texan accent, the most surprising art-dealer. “He was a fighter-pilot in the Korean and Vietnam wars. Got shot down twice; made it out both times,” Steve explained quietly as they approached. “There’s a rumor he’s hidden a few million bucks of treasure in the Rocky Mountains, with only a poem he's shared online to give clues to its location.”

Natasha cocked an eyebrow, her pace increasing. “Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, Rogers.”

Steve smiled fondly as Natasha brushed a kiss on Mr. Fenn’s cheek, charming the octogenarian. “Don’t suppose you’ll give me an extra hint?” she breathed playfully.

“Not a chance, young lady,” he drawled.

Natasha’s laughter filled Steve’s ears and his heart once more. The event was already a success in his mind, regardless of the sales.

Steve shook the owner’s hand. “I appreciate it, sir.” He hooked her arm in his, turning him away from her fascination and into the gallery, where the paintings were lighted and hung expertly. The space was still quiet, soon to be filled with guests of fame, notoriety, and wealth.

The painting of her was a centerpiece, hung above even Steve’s head, with shadows on the edges given way to bright spotlights on outstretched hands.

He gently clasped her elbow, turning her to face him, brushing her skin with his thumb. “I never even imagined this as a boy…” he started, then swallowed. “We have so many nightmares. Please, let this be our dream…only if for a night.”

When he kissed her eyelids, he thought his lips brushed against the beginning of tears. His stomach knotted; God, he was second-guessing himself now.

Just at that moment, Pepper and Tony arrived with raucous cheers and some snarky banter Stark had prepared meaning to unsettle him. The recent slang, _”whatever”_ , filled his head, and Steve caught one more look at Natasha in her royal blue dress with the pearls falling from her neck like merciful and favorable stars.

Natasha broke the spell, floating towards Pepper with both hands outstretched, giving a warmed and vibrant greeting.

Tony’s hand then clasped over his shoulder. “She’s trouble, dude,” Stark said, as from old experience, “I hope you’ve figured that out by now.”

Steve scoffed, looked up, and shook his head. “C’mon, Stark. Let me show you to the bar.”


	16. Chapter 16

As the guests filled the gallery and the caterer's staff began circulating with finger-foods and glasses of champagne, Sam arrived, dressed in a new suit and tie. Steve excused himself from a potential buyer and hugged his friend. “Didn’t have to break into Fort Meade for this suit, did you?” Steve quipped, smiling.

“Nah,” Sam returned, straightening his tie in a bit of show. “Did require security clearance, though.”

Steve laughed. “You know that receptionist from the VA? Darlene. She’s here.”

“You didn’t?!” There was amused delight in Sam’s eyes as his grin beamed larger. “Didn’t take you for a matchmaker, Cap.” Sam looked up the stairway leading to the next level of the building. “And Natasha?”

“She’s here. In blue,” Steve said. “I think Stark may be trying to goad her into a drinking contest or something.”

Steve caught Bruce Banner out of the corner of his eye, and he raised a hand up to catch the physicist’s attention. “Dr. Banner!” 

Bruce approached, still looking somewhat distracted, an apology on his lips. “Hey, sorry. I was caught up in an experiment. Couldn’t leave it running unattended.”

“It’s alright,” Steve excused. “Dr. Banner, I’d like to introduce you to Sam Wilson, my wingman. With no wings, currently...” He watched as Bruce and Sam shook hands. 

“That so?” Banner asked, curiosity and interest now in his voice.

Steve winked to Sam as he stepped back to return to the discussion with the patron. Matchmaker indeed.


	17. Chapter 17

“Hey, Mrs. Rogers! Welcome back to the neighborhood.”

Normally, Natasha would have just rolled her eyes at Stark’s brand of humor, but she was in a quiet mood, watching Steve below as he met and mingled with friends and strangers. And that one was pretty clever.

Tony pressed a cold glass into her hand. “Stoli on the rocks? I’m having one.”

Without taking her eyes off of him, she accepted the drink and took an initial sip. The liquor slid down her throat easily. Fire and ice.

“I’m not getting smashed with you, Tony,” she warned.

“Brrrrr…frosty.” He snatched a canape from a passing tray, crunching down on it and then licking his fingers. “If you want to come back over to Stark Industries, Nat, it would be great to have you; they wouldn’t even have to create a new HR file.”

She scoffed, but knew it was an upfront and personal offer.

On the floor below, Natasha watched as Pepper escorted yet another patron to introduce to Steve.

Tony took a sip from his glass and leaned on the railing. “She’s the best thing in my life. If she asked, I would give up the suit, all the heroics. He may do that for the right, special someone. If she asked.” He crunched on an ice-cube.

Alright. Maybe she _would_ get wasted, guzzling her remaining vodka. “I can’t.”

“Won’t?”

“Can’t. Steve’s got to do something. James Barnes may not be dead, after all.” Stark had absolutely no idea how much was behind those few words.

Tony sounded intrigued. “His war buddy? Bucky, right? My dad would tell me stories…Barnes used to sit in the cockpit with him and co-pilot. Trade girlie-mags. I think the Sergeant had a thing for gingers.” He turned around and snapped his fingers, raising his voice. “Another Stoli for Anastasia over here?! Great!”

Natasha clenched her jaw. Thank goodness Stark was horrible at reading people; well, at least most of the time. She couldn’t tell him about the Winter Soldier and his parents; that call was for Steve to make, if he ever would. And should Tony find out by other means? Natasha didn't want to contemplate what that would mean for the Avengers.

Clint was the one that rescued her, appearing from the crowd and taking the drained lowball from her hand. One silent look from him was all that she needed to understand.

A situation. Follow him.

She frowned. “Thanks for the drink, Tony. Looks like I may be going on the clock.”

Whatever Stark rebutted with was lost as she trailed Clint’s six into a back room.


	18. Chapter 18

Natasha kicked off her heels as soon as Clint latched the door. This felt natural, slipping into her espionage-skin, working again with her old partner. They had a shortcut of language, an easy trust, a reliance. 

They were in a storage closet Clint had turned into an impromptu command-and-control center for the reception’s security. A bit ad-hoc, but far above the worst they encountered together.

Clint handed her a headset, and she slipped it on over her styled hair.

“We can talk in here. I’ve triple-checked. No ears.” he said.

“What am I listening for…?” she asked, half closing her eyes.

“Everything. Watch the band-shift, too.” Clint pressed a few places on a console, and suddenly she listens to a soundscape filled with a murmur and snippets of conversation before blurring out to static. 

_“...Tango to Hotel. Tango to Hotel. 2115 perimeter sweep complete. All secure...”_

_“...Romanoff, in her first public appearance…”_

_“....stuffed apricots with goat cheese and pistachio fl...”_

And then Steve’s voice, which caused her to forget how to breathe. _“I’m sorry. It’s...Well, there is no price on what she is to..._ ”

Natasha pulled down the headset, trying to make sense of the peaks and dips on the console. Stupid vodka. Thankfully, Clint was there to figuratively hold her hand.

“Those are bugs. I’ve intercepted a few of the transmissions, but nothing stays on the same band for long. They jump to LF then VHF and back to MF. It’s hard to track, like chaotic. Receiver's got to be local though; not enough signal strength to make it past a half-click.”

She found her way out of the haze. “And it’s not Stark?”

“Nadda. Pepper affirmed he left the suit back in Manhattan. Also I confirmed Jarvis' protocols. Tony and Pepper are location-monitored, but all AV feeds are in stand-down.”

Natasha pushed out a sigh, raking both hands through her hair, forcefully. Why did everything precious in her life have to always go sideways? So much for dreams. “How close is the security perimeter?” she continued, trying to get her game-head on.

“We’ve been allowed roof-access on the adjacent buildings. Risk assessment and plain-clothes patrols began forty-eight hours ago,” Clint replied. “This is an art gallery, Natasha, not a military installation. My people are great, but these are civilians and supporters we are talking about. It’s not Rogers' style to force everything and everybody to goose-step and be predictable in the name of protection.”

Natasha took another long shuddering breath, tossing her head to look at the ceiling.

“Hey, kiddo. We’ll figure this out. Whomever it is, it’s clandestine, subtle. That’s a good sign,” Clint soothed. “Give yourself a few moments.”

A knot clenched unbidden into her stomach, and her mouth suddenly tasted iron and salt and frost. It was not entirely unwelcome. "He’s a sharp-shooter. Four blocks range...and that’s easy…”

Clint pressed a hand to the back of her shoulders, a warm and steady and nonthreatening presence. Her touchstone. “Think, ‘Tasha. If the Asset had kill-orders, he had his shot the minute you and Rogers, Stark or Potts stepped out of the limo. Think.”


	19. Chapter 19

As the reception progressed into its final hour, Steve lost count of the number of hands he shook. Public appearances used to frighten him, once upon a time, but the hours on stage and the media appearances after quickly made him at ease with positively-favored audiences. He still remembered his lines from 1943. 

_“Series E Defense bonds. Each one you buy is like a bullet in your best guy’s gun.”_

Natasha materialized again, holding two champagne flutes, and he gave her a particular boyish smile as she approached.

“Ready for a toast?” she asked as Steve’s last conversation partner politely stepped away.

“I think so,” he returned, reaching for the glass that she proffered. His fingertips just brushed the stem when she pulled it away again, a subtle move of only a few inches, but one that caused him a rush of panic.

Natasha flashed him the palm of her hand, to which she had written with marker: _Come upstairs. Act natural._

Steve swallowed and took a breath as the flute was finally passed to him. “How about we get a better view and a little fresh air? Roof sound good?”

“Hmm-hmm,” she purred. “Capital plan.”

Steve offered his arm to her, but in truth she was the one that lead, walking slowly and gracefully up the steps to the second floor balcony. They passed a security guard that subtly nodded to Natasha, and she handed him her untouched drink. Then she opened a utility door, ushered Steve quickly within, and closed it behind her.

Clint was there, a subtle frown on his lips as he continued to study a number of monitors and consoles crammed into the small space.

“Natasha?!” he asked, allowing his face to twist in worry, his body to tense.

She put her back against the door, and her expression seemed pained. “We think Barnes is outside.”

The glass he forgot he was holding shattered on the cement floor. Steve whipped his gaze to the monitors. “Where?!” he demanded.

Clint’s eyes flicked up to street layout. “An alley. Northwest quadrant. Possibly. No one's made visual, but it offers the best surveillance angles of the gallery.”

Steve’s hand flexed for his shield, the shield that was still in the limo. Something urgent within him was taking him over, and he was almost powerless to stop it. He needed to see Buck _now_. Needed to bring him home tonight if he surrendered or capture him if he did not. Before he hurt Natasha again (and again, and again), before he hurt anyone else. The man was his friend, and his responsibility. If Steve hadn't failed on that train...there would be no Winter Soldier. No two dozen assassinations. No using him for sadistic delights upon the unwilling.

“Let me out,” Steve growled.

“Calm down,” she returned.

Why wasn’t Natasha getting out of the way? Didn’t she care?!

“Let me out!” he shouted at her, desperate now and ready to physically tear her away from the door; to use his strength upon her in ways that he only vaguely sensed he would regret forever.

“Steve, listen!” she pleaded, her face stricken and twisted. “Stop and listen!”

Anger and anguish and desperation filled him, clouded his judgment. As Steve reached to clamp down on her bare shoulder, he heard the soft click of a safety disengaged, and felt the press of a muzzle on the base of his neck.

“Stand down, cowboy,” Clint said calmly behind him.

Steve froze.

Clint must have pulled the trigger anyway, because a horrible and chilling and tortured wail escaped Natasha’s mouth.


	20. Chapter 20

The haze in Steve’s head parted long enough for him to hear Clint’s “Fuck!” and feel the pistol removed from against his intact skin and then re-holstered. Clint checked him aside, and Steve looked down at Natasha’s crumpled form in front of the door. It couldn’t be real.

Still, Steve found words in his abject confusion. “What’s happening?! Is she shot?! Did Buck….?!” His imagination went there; an uncontrolled descent into what was quickly becoming his own living hell.

Clint sank to the floor and began gathering her small, half-pliable frame in his arms. “No, Cap,” he said with a hint of anger. "She's in a stupor. Catatonic state." Barton's tone relented a little. "You...meant too fuckin' much."

Steve felt a suck of air return to his lungs. He still was trying to understand. He couldn't. But instead of bolting out the door and pursuing, he demanded. "What is going on? Really going on?"

Clint's glance flickered between him and Natasha. He sighed, bringing Natasha in closer. "She's trying to deal with your demons and hers and Barnes' all at once, and it's destroying her bit by bit. It's a big clusterfuck, Rogers, and you've waded hip-deep into it."

This was all going too fast for Steve, and he sensed Clint would give him very few other answers. Not unless he played along.

"Why'd you pull the gun on me?" Steve felt himself ask, summoning all the fighting spirit he had left.

"Because you would have truly hurt her otherwise," was Clint's simple but enigmatic response. "And no one good like you should live with that. Someone good as you should take the bullet instead, rather than lay a hand on someone doing you or others no harm."

Clint tilted his head to a voice in his ear momentarily and pressed a transmit toggle. "Hotel actual to Tango squad and Bravo detail, disregard last order and return to standard assignment," he ordered, emotionless. Then he met Steve's gaze.

“You could go and try to chase your winter wraith now...” Clint suggested as he tilted Natasha’s pale and limp head up to check her pupils. “The Soldier is always ready to disappear, and when you pursue he’ll convince himself that you are not his friend after all, just another clever bounty hunter or enemy agent that’s setting a baited trap of lies for him. He's not HYDRA's any longer; he's watching us. Evaluating whether he can come out of the shadows. I think that’s what she was trying to tell you, Captain, but you didn’t listen.”

Steve found himself staring at the fall of Natasha’s scarlet hair, the ivory pearls gleaming in the cold light, the dark blue of her dress with a grim fascination and detachment. She was a portrait cradled in the hold of someone that actually understood her and also truly loved her.

“What can I do, Clint?” he pleaded, his vision obscuring with tears until he forced himself to sober up. Since the serum, his rescue of Bucky from Zola's HYDRA lab room, he was so used to making the calls. Now, he had no direction; no where to steer himself or others.

He witnessed Barton clench his jaw, and there was a long, chilly silence. Finally, he answered, not taking his gaze off of Natasha. “What you can do, Rogers, is go back out of this room and wish them all a good night. Stark, Potts, Wilson, Banner...everyone. If they ask about her, tell them she’s with me. Fucking in a closet or something, because we haven’t been with each other in weeks. When the gallery’s empty of everyone but my staff, come back, and we’ll work the plan to extract her. Convince them.”

He swallowed. A command performance he never, ever prepared for.

Steve raked back his hair and straightened his tie with a big shuddering breath. As he opened the door, he heard Clint mutter, “Welcome to the big leagues.”


	21. Chapter 21

The send-offs of Steve’s friends and fighting companions from the reception was almost unbearable. It was like walking in a fog of sound and sight, with only brief snippets of conversation, his and the others, shooting through the miasma. His mask wasn’t perfect, but it was doing the trick.

Tony. “Spider went back to the nest, huh? Sorry, Spangles. Guess she was the wrong girl, after all. Tried to warn ya…”

Pepper. “Don’t mind him, Steve.” She kissed his cheek. “It was a great evening. I was glad to be involved.”

Bruce. “Thanks. It was a good night out; I don’t get them much.”

Sam, with Darlene next to him, distracted. “I owe you one, brother. Text me when all the money comes through. I’ll book us first-class to anywhere.”

Doors were locked. The gallery emptied of guests. The caterers and servers and janitorial staff cleaned up and clocked out. The crowds outside started to dissipate but some still lingered hopeful for an autograph or photo. Steve stalked around the space like it was an immense cage, occasionally looking out the windows to the streets and alleys and nearby buildings, wondering if Bucky was there in this shadow or that.

A lone security guard approached him. “Barton could use your help getting her into the car.”

“Okay. I’m coming,” Steve responded dully.

When Steve got back to the utility room, it was already open and Clint had propped Natasha into a sit on the floor. A sudden odor of distilled booze hit his nose, and Steve guessed at Clint’s play.

“Stinking drunk, huh?” he asked.

Clint nodded. “Could you carry her? I got a car out back. Took some stuff you had in the limo and put it in there too.”

Gently, Steve collected her, hoping still that Natasha would somehow shake herself out of whatever horrible memories had her in their thrall. He remembered taking her out of the rubble at Camp Lehigh and running with her for miles and miles.

Clint put himself in the lead, walking with them down to the first floor and down a few office hallways.

“She used to be able to drink like a sailor,” Clint continued, even though it was just the three of them. “Guess clean living caught up to her.”

So the gallery was bugged.

“I wish I could have her problem,” Steve found himself bantering. “Well...maybe not this much of her problem.”

Clint unlocked a door and another, and when they weren’t walking Steve gazed down at Natasha’s pale and slack face.

Crisp night air blew in through the last opened steel door and the three stepped out into a back alleyway. A black SUV with tinted windows idled. Another one of Clint’s security detail was watching the entrances and exits.

“I’ll drive. Go with her in back.”

Steve eased Natasha in the back bench seat and then climbed in himself, shutting the SUV’s door behind them. He wrapped his arms around her protectively as Clint put the vehicle in gear and drove them both to the street.

“Where are we going?” Steve asked. “The hospital?”

“Fury’s secret facility in Virginia. The one Hill took you to get patched up before the Triskelion showdown?” Clint responded. “Does it still have a medical staff?”

Steve frowned. “I think so. Maybe.”

“Then that’s where we are headed, if you can give me directions.”

Steve looked out the window and orientated himself a bit better. “Get on 66 to South 81, then head towards Harrisonburg,” he directed, shifting Natasha so her head rested on his shoulder, and he could feel her slow breath against his neck.

They drove in silence for a while, and then Steve asked as calmly as he could manage. “What was that back there? With the gun and her?”

Clint responded. “I messed up and triggered her. But it’s not my story to tell,” looking at them through the rear-view reflection. “No one’s story, really, except hers. It didn't even begin with the Winter Soldier.”

Steve felt himself stroke Natasha’s hair for a bit, unknowing whether it would soothe her, but it helped him. “Triggered her. Because ‘I meant too much’...?”

“Love,” Clint simplified, letting the word hang in the air. “When you trusted yourself with her, when you gave her the safety to remember just a little bit, maybe even just your fuckin' chivalry in bed. Who knows? But something that went on between you completely disarmed all the reasons she had to keep her distance. Well, maybe all reasons but one.”

Steve gasped, blinking. “But she never said anything...we always just talked ‘friend, this’ and ‘friend, that.’ I didn’t push it, because…Because...I thought the Black Widow would never allow herself that.” He couldn’t tell whether he was sinking or soaring. He then felt his fists clench briefly. "How is it that you know so much, what she's feeling in ways she's never shared with me?" It was weird, talking about Natasha in the third person, when she was in his arms and muted. All lights out.

Clint met his eyes again in the mirror. "I listened and watched, Rogers. For months and months, I studied her files. I studied her, eventually. She was my prey. I saw her tiny falters, heard the bit-off words and names as she woke from nightmares. Things her dossier couldn't tell me exactly; things that made her not only a killer and a gifted manipulator, but a deeply scarred and abused girl that was trying to claw her way back to the light, to a happy life where she wouldn't need the lies anymore. When S.H.I.E.L.D. recruited her, Fury tasked me with keeping her head on straight and in the game. Guess you were a blind spot."

He narrowed his eyes. "Go on." Where was Clint leading?

"You are that light, Cap. You brought back to life something she thought was destroyed in her. Love; hope; redemption. She can't watch you go into the dark places she tread once before. Her past is there, a past that she survived once, barely, by abandoning love, abandoning hope, convincing herself that all these things she once had were stories in children's books and Russian folk tales." Clint looked over his shoulder briefly, and steered the vehicle to another highway lane. “As it stands now, if you died while trying to find the Winter Soldier, hunting down a rogue Asgardian, whatever...it would be the end of her. Not just the Black Widow. Her. Every man she has ever loved like she now loves you gets destroyed in one tragedy or another. Twice she's come to terms with it. A third time? Well, look at her. A vegetable, just from me holding a gun to your head.”

Steve sniffed and rubbed his eyes quickly with a single pass of his hand.

“I need Natasha back, Steve,” Clint stated, barely-reined emotion finally creeping into his voice. “Like you need Barnes back. And the world still needs Captain America, and I'd like to think the rest of the Avengers, too. So since you can't let Barnes go, will you let her...? ”

Steve swallowed and he looked out the window at the moon, keeping pace with them. His heart didn't pound blood, it pounded tiny pieces of shrapnel. Everywhere Natasha’s skin touched his, he was on fire.

“I don't understand. How can I do that without becoming another monster to her?”

“There are ways. S.H.I.E.L.D. had the technology,” Clint responded. “Natalia and I planned for this; she'd want to forget rather than be drowned and disabled by despair in her every waking moment. But we never talked about you."

Steve could not summon a single thought.

Clint prompted. "You’ll hate yourself a bit, maybe a lot. And for a while after, when you see her or talk with her, it’ll be excruciating to you. But you’re brave, and you’re getting better at dissembling. And with the two of us collaborating, she’ll swallow the lies I tell her about how close you two really were to each other.”

Steve just Clint's words seep into him. He listened to the sound of the tires speeding on the tarmac.

“Cap, you need to make the call on this. Soon.”

All Steve could think of at this moment was just how stupid and fucked-up their world had become.


	22. Chapter 22

Steve watched mile marker by mile marker of the midnight American road go by. Clint, at wheel of the SUV, waited in the silence for the decision that would paint over everything intimate that Steve and Natasha had shared since Fury’s attempted assassination by the Winter Soldier. Even, perhaps, the staged kiss on the shopping mall escalator.

If it was the other way around, if Clint had the capability to give Steve back the Bucky he knew and loved before his transformation into the nameless Asset...Steve would take it. Damn his soul, he would. It felt inordinately selfish; but now, since S.H.I.E.L.D. was dismantled, it was all, in one way or another, _personal_.

“Okay, Clint. We’ll do this,” he acquiesced.

Barton did not respond other than to take out a cellphone and begin making calls. Steve listened into half conversations as he continued to hold the unresponsive Natasha in his arms.

“....Yeah. I need the memory specialist from Tahiti...we’ll arrive by o-three-hundred...Alpha-level priority, yes...”

Things moved fast as soon as they arrived at the facility. Steve carried Natasha into a somewhat-familiar medical suite, and a junior doctor took her vitals shortly after she was lowered onto an examining table.

“She’ll need to be undressed and put into a medical gown, Rogers,” Clint stated after the initial examination was done, approaching her. Steve watched as he pressed his hand to the base of her neck. “For the procedure.”

“The pearls,” Steve understood finally.

“Do you want them back?”

Steve frowned and rubbed his temples. “No. Can you...?”

Clint unclasped the necklace and stuffed it into a zipper pocket in his pants. He also delicately removed the drops from her ears. “I’ll see what I can do. No promises.”

Barton then rested a hand on Steve’s shoulder, the first truly affable gesture he recalled Hawkeye had ever extended to him. They were allies in the Battle of New York, but never had Steve counted him a friend.

“Let’s get some fresh air for a bit,” Clint suggested. "It’ll be another few hours for them to prep her.”

* * *

When Steve and Clint returned from their quiet, pre-dawn walk-about, they found Natasha readied with an IV in her arm, a dozen monitoring devices clipped or adhered to her, and her face dotted with even more electrodes.

“If you have anything else you wish to say to her, this is your time. I’ll leave you both alone and watch the door. No one will eavesdrop, Cap; not even me.” Barton slipped out of the surgical suite.

Intellectually, Steve understood that whatever he said to Natasha would likely be erased in the treatment, even if she was capable at listening at all in her state; it would make no difference. This was really more about him than about her; his confessional.

So Steve pulled up a stool and eased his hand into hers, clasping it as if in prayer. He thought about his words carefully.

“I’ve done a horrible wrong to you, Natalia. I obsessed about Bucky, and it did more than cloud my judgment. I've destroyed a chance at something beautiful and rare between you and I. I didn’t listen, and I pulled on that thread too hard already, and it…”

He had to swallow and breathe. Still he felt hot wet channels fall down his cheeks. “Whatever happened with you and him when you were a girl, or before Barton brought you to S.H.I.E.L.D., I’ll do my best to deal with, and not hold it against Buck...or you. Whatever I find, whatever I learn. That’s the only way I can see through this...the only way I can honor…” God, what honor did he have left? He was split in half, between Bucky and her. Steve could pretend Clint had tipped the scales with his terrible logic that the cost of keeping the Avengers whole, sound and battle-ready, was worth _this._ But it came down to the bitter truth that he would do almost _anything_ to recover Bucky, and now Natasha paid the price of it.

Steve squeezed his eyes shut, hurting in a way that was different and more biting than his grief for Peggy.

His trembling fingers smoothed back her red hair, and he remembered unbidden the first time they had made love; how gentle and patient Natasha had been with him until he found his stride. There were so many electrodes attached to her forehead and cheeks. So instead he pressed his lips to her hand, softly, like a knight of old in reverence of his lady fair.

Steve then wiped his face and squared his shoulders. If he didn’t leave now, he may never have the courage to again.

As he passed through the doors of the operating suite, Steve found Clint was leaned up against a corridor wall, twirling a knife in his fingers, his face expressionless.

Steve had one last confession and oath. “You are better for her than I can ever be, Clint. I won’t invite myself between you both again.”

Clint tilted his head, looking at him. “The wipe isn't perfect. She’ll probably still have _something_ for you, even if she can’t place it. But if you reciprocate; it'll be this all again, and it would be disastrous.”

The medical techs and doctors entered the hallway one by one from a second corridor. One of them looked to Clint, and he nodded wordlessly. They went in to where Natasha lay prone and awaiting. Steve counted seven white-coats pass him by, entering into the ward.

 _The year was 1938, February. The cold winter light painted every Brooklyn building in tones of sepia and gray. Steve was nineteen. Buck initially teased him about catching a matinee of_ Snow White. _Then mid-sentence in his ribbing, his best friend suddenly shut up. His mother’s TB had worsened significantly; and Steve felt himself fortunate that Buck figured out why he needed to escape in the color fantasy of a simple fairytale._

Through a window, Steve observed in grim fascination as the technicians gathered around Natasha, deathly still on her tomb of wires and chrome. Her prince would not give her the kiss of true love; the only thing to awaken her would be the sharp pulses of electroshocks to her skull.

Clint sheathed his knife and looked on as well with his steeled and appraising gaze as the procedure began, with one of the techs inserting a mouth guard past her lips. 

Steve’s stomach clenched and he couldn’t help but wonder if he hadn’t made a mistake. He felt sick, and he almost chose to bolt out of the facility into the forest beyond. He choked out, “This is horrible…”

“This is actually as humane as it can be done,” Clint countered. “She’s put under; and the targeting is pretty specific. This is a procedure; what they must have done to Barnes was butchery, and they did it over and over, without much discrimination. Even without her voice, Natasha is trying to tell you things. To help you recover him, even when she gave up herself.”

The words barely registered as Steve forced himself to watch, even when she convulsed upon the table. What took mere minutes seemed to stretch on and on. Eventually, he had to shut his eyes, but he could still hear the whine of charge and thump of discharge of each torturous cycle through the security glass.

“It’s finished,” Clint’s voice pierced through his misery.


	23. Chapter 23

_Natalia dreamed of walking through a room. It was large and tall and filled with warmth, swaths of bold color, and softened reflections. Drops of searing red rain fell upon her but the moment they splashed upon her skin, they changed a milky white or were captured into her hands as cool ivory pearls before falling into the calm, sapphire pool at her feet. A man’s golden touch, his moist lips against the curve of her neck. His arms ever around her. A loving whisper in her ear, “Wake up, Sparks.”_

_A crash of lightning, blinding her to it all, and the room flickered into darkness. She arched in pleasure or panic, underneath the weight._

_Then she floated in a field of pulsing scarlet stars and blue-white pentagrams; each like a jewel hung on a net, brilliant and gleaming against an inky sky. She touched one weave between the differentials, and listened as the entire web sang in a once-frozen harmony that both sorrowed and delighted her._

_From somewhere, far off of the companion-space, a supernova burst as a tiny pin-prick, and she was both pulled and pushed towards it. At first, it was a curiosity that she gazed, and then it transfixed her. The rushing particles blazed against her, crashed through the back of her eyes and out again. Then the event collapsed upon itself before she could turn away, swallowing her in._

In the haze after, she still breathed. A presence was perched close by but not too close.

Natasha cracked open her lips and asked, huskily, “Did I fall asleep?”

The hawk-eyed angel replied evenly, “For a little while.”

As the veil of her sedation began to lift, she muttered. “Everything hurts…” Because everything did in a dull way, inside and out.

“Rest. I’ll explain it all later, kiddo.”


	24. Chapter 24

Steve sat alone on the wooden floor of the loft, cross-legged, taking a last study of the diagram Natasha had built with him out of the documents of the Winter Soldier’s dossier. His vibranium shield and a backpack with necessary gear rested on a nearby pillar. Almost everything else was fit into boxes for long-term storage.

Steve unpacked one of his sketchbooks to try to create, in miniature, a map of what he must remove from the wall today, before he turned in his keys to the rental agency.

Nearly three-hundred thousand dollars was now in his bank account; it was a wealth he could not comprehend except that someone more financially-savvy than him confirmed that it could fund his search for Barnes for a couple of years, even with Sam in tow. If the bribes weren't too stiff.

But where to start? The death of Tony Stark’s parents? The bugs littered around the gallery? Old haunts in Brooklyn? 

He absently flipped through the thick artist’s paper, looking for the first blank page. He caught his graceful line tracing the curve of a delicate neck, a spill of umber hair, fine fingers curled against her sleep-slackened lips.

Steve barely recalled when he had captured Natasha like this. He tried not to remember her at all, as if it had been him on that ruthless table. Still, that defenseless portrait of her renewed the sharp regrets in his heart.

He was about to turn the page again, when he saw her handwritten script on the left-hand margin of the page. _Do not hunt the man. Hunt the monsters that enslaved him._

Steve closed his eyes shut and sighed. Even gone from him, Natasha was still speaking, whispering this time almost seductively in his ear, _“Listen.”_

He fished in his pocket for the small device that was sometimes a phone and sometimes a radio and sometimes a camera and sometimes a movie screen. From his other pocket he found the tiny buds that had replaced the huge headsets of his youth.

Steve let muscle-memory take over for how his fingers had to swipe to pull up the dozens of record albums that he had quite recently figured out how to keep with him on his travels.

He cued up the Peter Gabriel songlist, and whispered to the space, “Alright, Sparks. Speak to me.”

And a few hours later, his stereo became his phone again. He dialed Sam.

“Hey, Sam. I think I have a first lead...Geneva. Military cargo would be great, if you can get it. But if you can’t, I’ll ask Barton...Yeah. Him… Trust me. I’ll explain it later.”

**Finis.**


End file.
